A forum for people who need game information translating. If you have the skills and the time, please help your fellow gamers here. DO NOT POST COPYRIGHT MATERIAL. ゲーム情報の翻訳が必要な人のためのフォーラムです。もし能力と時間があれば、仲間のゲーマーのために手を貸してください。著作権のある物は投稿はしないように。

I have been thinking about why Gaijin almost never play against Japanese unless it is a some kine of tournament or something like that... and I guess it is a Language thing as much as it is anything else if you do not speak Japanese it is very hard to play a game in Japanese and if you do not speak English then you will have a hard time playing a game in English... I hope this becomes a very good thread that keeps people interested in learning Japanese... if you are better at Japanese than I am feel free to pitch in... Let's learn Japanese for 40k.. and let's Keep this on Topic for once...

Starting with the Stat lines

Most Japanese understand the English stat line however New Japanese Players will have little to no clue what the Japanese equivalent is...

good luck with these and remember that if you get in trouble pull out your rule book and let them have a read most Japanese that can not speak English at all can still read enough to get the main idea.. if any Japanese players want to take over and teach this class feel free to do so... I hope to post a few times a month but if I can get help that would be even better...

When it comes down to it, until very recently (like, three or four years ago max recently) any Japanese person who wanted to play any wargames besides WFB had to have at least the level of English skill to translate the ding-dang rules into Japanese by themselves, which is hardly a trivial task. Look at the guys playing Warmachine - all the cards and rules are in English, and they get along just dandy. I guarantee you that pretty much every Japanese guy at the Joshin group, for example, is perfectly capable of playing a game with a foreigner entirely in (possibly broken, but still) English.

Which is to say I agree with Primarch - the only thing that's keeping us from playing with the Japanese guys more is ourselves, guys. I'm thinking the surge in popularity of WM with the gaijin crowd in Nagoya at least will do a lot to get the groups mixing here. (And I hope Hordes Mk II comes out soon so I can help out - I know it's a lousy excuse but I hate hate hate the layout of the pre-release test rules.)

And to keep this slightly on topic so the Admiral doesn't get mad, I've found that much more than game terms (which most guys playing know in English anyway, so if you just pronounce the terms in katakana you're golden), basic "this is what I'm doing" terms are super useful.

roll (dice) : furuhit : nagurushoot : utsumove : idou suruN+ on a die to succeed : N-pura (where N is ni, san, yon, go, roku)The counter for dice is usually -ko, for successes is -hatsu. So if you're rolling 6 dice needing a 4+ and get 3 successes it'd be "Rok-ko de yon-pura... (count dice) San-patsu desu." You can even hold up 3 fingers. Hell, looking at it, I'm not even sure if that's the right word order or particle, but it's how I've been saying it for years and everybody's understood me.

At least 80% of the communication we do around the table comes down to this kind of thing, doesn't it? I'm going to make a value judgment and suggest that anyone who's been in the country for more than a month or so shouldn't be afraid of this level of Japanese.

(Although actually I should apologize for the kind of bitchy tone of this post, because I reckon that when it comes down to it most of us gaijin would love to get more games in with the Japanese guys. Like Primarch, I mostly just find that there isn't much overlap in game interest - of course, there isn't much overlap in game interest for the games I want to play with the gaijin crowd, either, heh.)

(Hmm. Maybe we should organize a "demo your favorite non-popular game day." Mike could do FoW, I could do Epic, Primarch could do Uncharted Seas... But that's way off-topic.)

Dungeon Lord wrote:Does anyone have a spare rulebook in Japanese? Maybe I can have a go at translating parts...

Thanks for the offer, I think that most of what this thread is talking about, is actually knowing enough Japanese to get a game in. Most of the "yon pura" stuff people can pick up over a few games, but I find explaining special rules (fleet or furious charge) to be a real pain. Most of the Japanese guys know their stuff though.Beyond that, there are a bunch of new game systems kicking around now at the kamimaezu group (Flames of War, Uncharted Seas, Malifaux) that just dont have Japanese rules available. Whilst some Japanese players could probably pick things up after spending time with the rule book, its very difficult to run a demo game for them to introduce them to it.

I do have a Japanese 40k rulebook (comes from buying multiple sets of Black Reach), I actually had my wife go through the special rules section and write Furigana for all the rules. I then went online and with the help of a translation program and a good dictionary I was able to work out what most of the rules are.

Dungeon Lord wrote:@ The other Dave: Those are some good words. I think "Naguru" means punch than hit a target with a projectile. I believe a more common word is "ataru". Which you would use in the past tense "atatta"

Yeah, I should have been clearer - that was in the context of hand-to-hand combat.